Comeback (27 page)

He brushed off my bringing him into the equation. “Have you seen the pictures of the two of them together? TMZ is all over them.
He’s
all over
her
. In public. Makes me want to punch him in his perfect fucking nose. Doesn’t he care that her family is seeing everything?”

“Don’t do that. He’s not worth the bail money.”

I had seen the shots of her with this skeevy-looking guy, so I could completely understand Babs’s frustration. The first year she had been in Hollywood, the paparazzi had caught her with Jesse Carmichael, one of her costars, just about everywhere she’d gone. There’d been more than a few instances when I’d been glad she wasn’t my daughter, because I wouldn’t have wanted to see my little girl in that kind of situation. She’d finally kicked Carmichael to the curb after about a year, but I was pretty sure the damage to her reputation had already been done, whatever it might have been. Ever since then, when she’d been caught by the paparazzi it was never anything too bad. At least it wasn’t until Beau Brunetti showed up. Now both Babs and Webs were on edge a hell of a lot more every time Katie’s name popped up in the media.

Babs stabbed at a piece of steak with his knife, not really paying much attention to his food. “She invited me over for Christmas Eve. Told me I should bring Levi, too.”

“Are you going?”

He stopped eating to raise a brow at me. “I might be a glutton for punishment, but even I have more sense than that.”

“Just making sure.” No point in both of us suffering through miserable Christmas breaks if we could keep the damage to just one of us.

“I was thinking about renting some ice during the shutdown,” he said, changing the subject. “Getting out for a skate. You want in? I bet we could get a few of the guys to join us.”

That would definitely make those few days go by a little faster. I wasn’t sure how it would go with me at home for a few days, the kids out of school, and Jessica needing space. Having an excuse at the ready to get me out of the house seemed like a very good idea.

“Yeah, count me in.”

“Bring the kids,” Babs said. “They had fun yesterday. We can get them out there, too. I know Soupy can’t get out and skate, but I bet he’d be up for bringing Tuck and Maddie to get them out of Rachel’s hair.”

“I bet Jessica wouldn’t mind a break, too.” She could likely use some time to do whatever she needed to do before I had to go out of town with the team on our next road trip.

Babs eyed me over the top of his water glass as he sipped. “Speaking of Jessica…”

“Do we have to?” I shouldn’t have brought her into the conversation since I really didn’t want to go there. It didn’t seem right to talk about what was going on when I didn’t understand it all, myself.

“Would you rather I ask you how you’re feeling since your sister died?”

“Fine. So, Jessica,” I grumbled. “What do you want to know?”

“Just curious how serious that is. You and her.”

So serious my stomach had been in knots since a couple of nights ago and I didn’t know what to do about it. I shrugged. “Hard to say.”

“She’s living in your house. Seems pretty serious to me.”

“She’s helping with the kids is all.”

“Somehow, I don’t think that’s all.” He gave me a wry look that brought out his huge dimples—the ones that made all the girls swoon. “Someone who’s just a friend doesn’t do that kind of thing. They don’t move in and help you raise kids just for the hell of it or because they feel bad for you. I mean, if you were paying her, I could maybe see it…”

I wasn’t paying her, though. I’d set up a joint account so she could use that money to pay for things the kids needed when I was gone, things like that, but she had flat-out refused to take any money for all the trouble she was going to. Babs was right, but he only knew part of the story.

“I don’t know what’s going on between us,” I told him, deciding to go with honesty again. I was coming to learn that even when there were things in my life that I’d prefer to hide, honesty was usually the best policy. If only I’d been more upfront with Jessica, maybe we wouldn’t be in this boat.

The waiter came over and dropped off our bill. Babs grabbed it before I could, sliding a fifty inside the leather cover and setting it back on the table. “How long do you think it’ll take for you to figure it out?”

“I don’t know.” I wished I knew the answer to that. “How long do you think it’ll take for you to get over Katie?”

“I hope for your sake, you figure your shit out a hell of a lot faster than I have.” He climbed out of the booth we’d been sitting in, shrugging into his coat. “But don’t let it go on too long, Nicky. She’s dropped everything for you and those kids. Maybe you don’t know what to do with that. Maybe she doesn’t. But it’s big, and you’re lying to yourself if you think otherwise.”

I knew it was big. It might be even bigger than I understood. I was just afraid that I’d already fucked it up, simply by being me, and there was nothing I could do to make it right.

SINCE THE KIDS
were out of school for their winter break, we ended up going to Nicky’s game regardless of the fact that it was a weeknight. Bedtime got thrown out the window in favor of fun time.

“You’re playing tonight?” Hugo asked as we all headed out the door for the drive to the arena.

“That’s what Coach tells me,” Nicky replied, trying to herd the kids to the minivan. We were both learning that getting kids to do what you wanted them to was sometimes an exercise in futility. Kids would do what kids would do. They lived in a different head space than we did, with no sense of deadlines and alarm clocks and being on time.

Elin put on her brakes and spun around to go back in the house, and Nicky called after her, “Elin! Get in. I don’t want to be late.”

“I just need…”

Whatever she needed got lost as she slipped past me into the house. Nicky gave me an exasperated look, as if I should have been able to get all of this under control while he took his pre-game nap. Never mind the fact that I had a job to do, too, and I’d been trying to work from the dining room table with three bored kids bouncing all over the place.

I bit down on my tongue to keep myself from saying something I would regret. Seconds later, Elin came running out, and I was able to shut and lock the door. When I climbed into the minivan, I looked over my shoulder to see what she’d gone back for. It was a book.

“It’s Maddie’s,” she said. “She let me borrow it. I promised I’d bring it back to her tonight.”

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate it,” I said to her as Nicky backed out of his driveway. He didn’t say anything. For that matter, he didn’t say a word the whole way to the arena, holding the wheel with a bad-tempered grip.

That was my fault. I knew it as surely as I knew the shape of my own nose. I’d let my doubts get the best of me, and I’d let him know all the things I was unsure of, and he had internalized it as addicts tended to do. In his mind, it was all on him, despite the fact that my fears were my own and not anything he could control.

I wanted to talk to him again, to get through this hurdle I’d thrown in our path, but it would have to wait. We couldn’t do it in front of the kids, and he had a game to prepare for tonight.

He made sure we got up to the owner’s box all right before heading down to the locker room to get ready. I had just settled in to chat with Rachel and Sara when Laura Weber and her brood of three essentially grown kids came in to join us. Katie was the eldest. Luke was in his first year of college at the University of Minnesota. Dani was in her senior year of high school. Laura and Katie sat down with us, and the other two headed for a quiet corner where they wouldn’t have to be subjected to our conversation. Or maybe it was so they wouldn’t run the risk of us overhearing their conversation.

Katie was a younger version of her mother. Both could have walked out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Actually, I was fairly certain that I’d be able to find Katie in the pages of several magazines at the very moment if I went to look, so I supposed it wasn’t a bad assessment.

She took the seat right next to me and leaned over, resting her weight on the arm of the chair. “Jamie tells me you’re living with Nicky. How is he
really
doing?”

I was well beyond annoyed by people asking me that. “How would you be doing if you had just held Dani’s hand and watched her die?” I snapped.

Her face dropped, and I felt like an ass.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sighing. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I guess people are asking you that a lot, huh? It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right,” I said. “I’m just frustrated by a lot of things right now. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s kind of nice to have someone griping at me for something other than my choice in boyfriends.”

The current boyfriend in question, Beau, came in at that moment with a couple of beers in his hand. She pulled him down next to her, ignoring the disapproving look from her mother, and took the beer he offered her before she introduced me to him. We talked for a little while. Katie volunteered them both to be celebrity drivers for the Light the Lamp New Year’s Eve event, ignoring the shocked look on Beau’s face at the idea that he’d have to be sober on a night that most people spent drinking. Katie must be really good at overlooking the things she didn’t want to see.

It wasn’t too much longer before the team came out for warm-ups, and we were able to turn our attention to the ice.

The game turned out to be an intense one, with high energy rushes from end to end and both goaltenders putting on a show. Despite a large number of shots, both Nicky and Corey Crawford had managed to keep the other team from scoring leading into the third period.

“If Nicky keeps this up, he’ll be challenging Hunter for the starting job soon,” Katie said to me at one point. “Dad said that Nicky’s been looking better and better every time he’s played this season.”

“He has been.”

“I wish I had more time to watch,” she said.

“I’m glad you don’t,” Beau grumbled, downing the last of his fourth beer. “You only want to watch Jamie fucking Babcock.”

“It’s better than watching you get drunk off your ass,” she replied, and I tried to refocus my attention on the game. Beau’s behavior was definitely worrisome, but Katie had her own life to live. I couldn’t expect her to learn from my mistakes. She was going to have to learn them on her own.

Nils came over and climbed onto my lap, giving me a perfect excuse to stay out of Katie and Beau’s conversation.

“Is Uncle Nicky going to win tonight?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to watch to find out.”

He settled in, leaning back against me. I thought he was done there, but he took both of my arms and wrapped them around his waist. “I’m glad you’re with us, Jessica,” he said so quietly that I almost missed it. The crowd roared because Nicky somehow managed to save a shot from Patrick Kane that he never should have even gotten close to touching. Nils looked up at me, his face solemn. “You’re kind of like a mama. But you’re also like a friend.”

I squeezed him tight, too touched to know how to respond right away. The energy of the crowd made it so that I couldn’t respond, anyway. The Storm had regained control of the puck and were streaking toward the Chicago goal on an odd-man rush, and half the fans in the building, maybe more, were on their feet in anticipation. Crawford made the initial save on Eric Zellinger’s shot, but Vladimir Berezin got his stick on the rebound and got it over the goal line while the goaltender flopped to the ice in his attempt to snag it. The goal horn sounded, the already on-edge crowd went wild, and Nils bounced on my lap with excitement.

I leaned down so my mouth was close to his ear, and I said, “I’ll be your friend as long as you want me to be.”

I couldn’t very well promise to be his mama. For one thing, no one would ever replace Emma. And for another, I wasn’t sure what would happen between me and Nicky, based on the way he’d been avoiding talking to me in the last couple of days.

These kids needed a friend, though, and that was something I could definitely be. I held Nils close and watched his uncle complete the shutout he’d begun, all the while trying to figure out how to fix the problems I’d created.